About the Guide

This guide is almost a copy of an older that i made 7 months ago. But i didn't wanted to modify the old one and keep it so i made a new one with a refresh of the build a the majority of the text which come from the old one. Enjoy !

About the champ

Firstly, welcome to this beautiful world of the late game. Where stacks are your new objectives and you could die for one of them (in-game).

As you may know and as you can see on League of Graph, Aurelion Sol, even if he created the universe, get coutered by everyone and counter nobody (even yuumi i think, never tried).

But as Aurelion Sol, you have to be the smarter on the rift, to play it.

I'll not say this is a troll build, because it can work very well in most cases but only if you manage to go throught the early game (like every Asol game i know).
But as you may know, above 300-400 stacks, stacks are more valuable than AP stats, and my build is based on this.

Your goal, is to shield you as much as possible in order to play aggressivly and stack even more than with a glass cannon build in order to outperform it in late game.


Here are the pros and cons of this build :
cons :

Not very usefull before 10 min (not the fault of the build, its Asol ^^)
You will have less damage (in early)
You will need some time to adapt to the gameplay
You're team will think that you troll

pros :

You outperform the glass cannon build in late game
You are tonky
You will surprise everyone with your tankiness
You can commit more => more stacks
You're a dragon => you're better

Gameplay

Firstly, i'm not here to give you basics advice for the champ, i'm here to explain how to and why play my build.

Early Game

During the laning phase, you will have 2 goals : dont die, and stacks (obviously).
But here, those 2 goals are even more important.

In my old guide, i told you to go for the tear and play safe and passively stack under tower... That was not the best way to play the build.
Now, the build is even more goofy and tonk than the old one. So no more passive stacking under tower and wait for the late.
Thanks to a friend who opened my eyes, the best strategy is to directly confront the enemy from level 1, whether it's Yasuo, Katarina, Zed, Yuumi, Aurora, etc. Don't wait for stacks, go get them. Did the enemy use their CC? You go in on them. You stack them. Edge your HP, back off as much as necessary, but play as aggressively as possible. This gameplay requires extensive knowledge of the champion. But I guarantee that an Aurelion who hits you head-on from the first minute can destabilize your enemy and give you the victory in a matter of minutes.
A quote I like says: "Go ahead, underestimate me. That’s the first step to your defeat."

One good timing to have is to back before the objectives, be ready to fight. As i said, you're weak early and the firsts objectives are extremly importants, so be ready, the mid game arrive...

Mid Game

Okay, lets say you have your 2 firsts items, rylai and Frozen Hearth in general.
This is the moment where my build can start. You can start to play aggrssivly, but intelligently. DUring an objective,theoretically, while your team dont die, as long as you're fighting, you're winning because you're stacking (sry thats a lot of -ing). Use your "tankiness" to stacks, not over commit and die ^^. In all case, you will not deal a lot of damage, so stack, thats the only thing you can do !

Late Game

Here we go, now the fun begin.
You have stacks, enough to compete with a normal AP build. But, you can tank, so now, you can stack exponentially thanks to your tankiness !

I don't have anything to say except that for the early game, as i said above, mana is very valuable. So as long as you go for mana runes, you can customize it as you wish !
But, as i said above, you can also go for the Resolve tree. The concept of this runes page is to gain golds as much as possible. It's a different way to play but can still work in certain conditions i guess ?

Items

Rilay

It's obviously a must have, i know that some build start with black torch, but for 2 reason we will start with Rylai :
- We dont go AP, so no black torch
- Rylai is THE item to stack more efficiently
(you can start BFT if against an hard pusher, but you can still manage the lane with Rilay)

Seraphin

His shield is very good for the early and the late game, and it has a good amount of mana and hp so must have in general

Frozen hearth / Frozen Hearth

Do you know what is the most frustrating for an assassin like Katarina ? Not having damage. So why dont we just suppress them ? You know why Lux / Vel'koz or other AP champs dont start with those items ? Because they are not dumb ? Maybe, but mostly because items is their only way to deal damage. But here, we are smart, we play a dragon that dont need AP to deal damage, because we have the holy stacks !
So here, take the item that counter your lane opponent the best.
And the mana that offer Frozen Hearth is very cool !

Randuin

Yo ucan be surprised by how great Randuin work against a Crit opponent ! And often, the adc go for a crit build too ! So it may be a good situational item !

Jak'Sho

I know thats a weird item, and i know that some Asol build had Jak'Sho in it but as last item. And you know why ? Because a 40-50 min, we dont need AP anymore because we have stacks, thats why those builds had tank items as last item. But here, we are smarter, we do it in 3rd (or 4th for jak'sho) !

No seriously, this is the moment of the game where you need to have a global impact, and Jak'Sho, because of his stats and passive, is a good item for it.
Moreover, because of the build and your gameplay style (long fights), the passive is technically perfect for this build !

Zhonya / Banshee

I may guess your question : "why dont do it as 2nd item ? It have armor / RM and have AP to deal damage !".
And the first reason is... It's fun, it's fun to have a tank item as 2nd item. Yeah, that's it.
To be serious, as i said, we're here to stacks, not deal damage, and against a lane bully, Frozen hearth and Frozen Hearth are the best items to keep you alive ! (+ the mana from Frozen hearth is very cool in early)

Abyssal Mask

Here what i said in the previous guide : "I know that this item is weeird asf, and i totally agree, but this item may be a good item in order to tank even more against a full AP team, that's why i put it in the situationnal section. But still can be usefull.".
But after more deep research, Abyssal mask apear as a very good item, It gives you RM and HP to tank more, while giving you a constant bonus damage of 12% (you need to be close but honestly this is not a huge condition)! And except Banshee, there is not a lot of items that gives you a good RM tankiness while giving you this much of damage ! So always an item to consider. Moreover, it goes well with your Q stacks ratio on max HP !
But for this item, it is best to not be alone to deal AP damage

Hollow Radiance

Strangely enough, it's also a good item for Aurelion. In addition to providing a good amount of MR and HP, its passive will allow you to split push and carry much better in team fights thanks to its area damage. It's not necessarily the main MR item I always go for. But let's say it's a good situational item and can be interesting if there isn't a lot of AP damage on the opposing team.

RiftMaker

This one is kinda obvious for Aurelion, but here with this build it's even more valuable. Due to our tankiness we'll be using his passive even more because we do longer fights !

Additional notes

You can go further into the tankiness by making Warmog or any other tank item, but here, i think that because of the weakness that represent the CC for Aurelion , Banshee can be a good item in late game, and Zhonya for the same reason (and the amount of armor will be very good with Frozen Hearth and Jak'Sho).

Build explanation

I will not go very deep in the explanation, but i will resume what i say above and maybe add few more tips.

First Item

Fisrt, go Rilay, it's the best way to stack and give you a good survivability and crowd crontrol ability. The only situation where you dont go Rilay first is to go BFT against an hard pusher/Roam champ like malzahar or Talon. But i garantee you that you can still manage them with Rilay.

Second Item

Go for an item that counter the best your main threat, Force of Nature if he's an AP, Randuin if its a crit champ like Yas or Yone. But in most cases, you will go for Frozen Hearth mainly for the mana and because in every game there is almost always an AD threat.
You can always go for BFT if you realy need mana and damage, but in most of my games, i almost always managed with the 3 first options.

Boots

As i said above, because you will almsot always go for Frozen Hearth as a 2nd item, RM boots is a good option, so now, you can tank AP and AD damage, and you have a good amount of CC resistance (which is always a must have on aurelion)
But if 90% of the damage are AD, you can always go for armor boots.
And never go Sorcerers boots, those are for smart people, here, we are dumb asf, but at least we tank.

Third Item

Here you can complete your tankiness, by making Randuin, Force of nature, Rookern, Frozen Hearth, Abyssal mask, hollow radiance, depending on how the game evolves and how threats are evolving

Fourth and fifth item

There you can go for Jak'Sho and Riftmaker in order to have more sustain and fight regen. Or complete with one of the items listed above if it's really needed.

Note : my Typical Game V1.5 build is one of my favorite because it's the most goofy for me. But can still tank a lot while dealing a good amount of damage

As you may guess, we're not here to discover a new meta, i'm not here to show you a new build that can allow you to increase your winrate. I'm only here to show a new way to play Aurelion. Some AP champs like Lux or Veigar are here to destroy you in 2 spells. And i think that this build is not made for Aurelion, that's why 99% of the builds go Liandry or Black Torch. But i want to go deeper, i want to use stacks as much as possible. I want to create a build which does not depend of the AP ratio of the champ. The only weak spot of the late game Aurelion is his survivabilty, so why not counter this and let the stacks do the damage ?

In all case, it all depend of your gameplay, personnaly, i love stacking (oh really?). So if you stack, with this build, you can literally counter your counter ! What is a Katarina / Fizz / Yasuo / Yone without damage ? It's only a hitbox with HP that give you stacks if you vomit on it !

All i can say is good luck and may the stacks be with you.
And never forget, We don’t wait to be strong to strike, we strike to become strong